"Qubes OS comes from an elegant concept: if you can isolate functional components within disposable containers, and you can separate those components that can be tainted through their interaction with the outside world from the core subsystems, you stand a good chance to preserve the integrity and security of the base Operating System at the possible expense of needing to jump through some hoops to move data around the system. All in all it sounds like a good proposition if it can be demonstrated to be practical." Read the full review.
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Member since:2009-12-07
Yes but we're talking about protecting users from themselves. Hardware has vastly outstripped the performance needs of most users. That's why this big "end of the pc"/tablet/smartphone movement has any legs at all and why ARM is becoming so attractive with its much lower power usage/performance ratio.
For probably 90% of most corporate/enterprise users the performance penalty paid by all this virtualization/context switching would be negligible on current hardware compared to the needs of the task that is putting the system at risk, (browsing, installing questionable/untrusted executables, viewing email attachments in unsecure plugins/viewers, etc). The more we go down the absurd road of let's turn the browser into an operating system with hardware acceleration, webGL, etc that will perhaps be less true.
I think the biggest hurdle facing user adoption is making its use painless/seamless. Remember (one of?) the biggest gripes about Vista in the enterprise was all those UAC dialogs. Qubes seems to paint each "domain" in a different color window which is a nice UI cue, but graduating data from one domain to the other beyond the copy/cut/paste metaphor is always the sticking point.
And while it isn't absolutely a new concept, it is a project worth watching imho.
Member since:2005-07-06
Yes but we're talking about protecting users from themselves.
A noble idea, but software can't protect against user ignorance. Once you foolproofed a thingamajig, nature goes and invents a bigger fool.
Education would solve a lot of problems out there, but somehow the belligerent end-user won. Now techies are trying to find ways to let untrained individuals wield tremendous power without causing too much damage. Which is strange, because every other powertool comes with the expectation that anybody wielding it knows how to operate one.
A multipurpose computer simply isn't a toaster and treating it like one will, sooner or later, get you burned.
Not that it ultimately matters. Some belligerent end-user or a brainwashed techie will label me an elitist and the quest for uneducated toaster computing will hurry forward unabashed.
As a aside, maybe uneducated computing will become a reality with true A.I. Then again, the computer may opt to kill the dunce who is trying to give it commands :-)
Member since:2005-07-06
UAC was intentionally designed to be annoying, to raise awareness of apps running as administrative users without good reason and trigger a sort of roundabout kick in the pants to developers via annoyed users.
I absolutely agree though that the big issue will be putting the metaphors into a scheme that feels natural to use for the average user instead of feeling like it's fighting against the user.
If the features are compelling enough the performance hit will be overlooked, just like it has been in most of the big jumps in computing.
Member since:2005-11-13
I hate when people say 'For 90% of users out there...". What they're really saying is "we're about to piss off the other 10%", and I always seem to be a part of that 10%.
Member since:2005-07-08
The same is also being tried with Minix 3:
http://www.minix3.org/
At an event earlier today, Microsoft unveiled the next Xbox - the third model, but confusingly named Xbox One. The big focus was TV, integrated Kinect, and all the other stuff we all expected to be forced down our throats. I think it took them 25 minutes to actually come to what should be the core of the story: gaming. Nothing groundbreaking in the gaming department, except for how Microsoft intends to handle the used games market and borrowing games from friends: pay up, buddy!
The day has finally come! Jolla has finally announced the launch device for its Sailfish operating system - and by god this is a looker. It's decidedly different from other phones out there, but it has good specifications and carries a relatively reasonably price tag - EUR 399, and it's up for pre-order today, shipping in the fourth quarter of this year.
Why does Google get so much credit in the technology industry? Why, despite the company's many obvious failings, do many geeks and enthusiasts still hold a somewhat positive view on the all-knowing technology giant? A specific talk at Google I/O this week provides the answer.
OSNews is a sponsor of this year's O'Reilly OSCON in Portland, Oregon, USA. A lucky OSNews reader will win a free three-day pass, including two tutorials days. To win the pass, post a comment on this story saying something about Open Source Software or OSCON. We'll pick a winner at random next week. If you don't have an OSNews account, you may email us your entry. Part of the conference is the 9th annual Open Source Awards, and today the 16th is the deadline for nominations. If you'd like to nominate an outstanding open source contributor, do it here. Read on for more information about OSCON. Update: The 20% discount code for OSNews readers is "OSN."
"Windows is indeed slower than other operating systems in many scenarios, and the gap is worsening." That's one way to start an insider explanation of why Windows' performance isn't up to snuff. Written by someone who actually contributes code to the Windows NT kernel, the comment on Hacker News, later deleted but reposted with permission on Marc Bevand's blog, paints a very dreary picture of the state of Windows development. The root issue? Think of how Linux is developed, and you'll know the answer.
This is one of those news items that's fun to write, fun to read, fun to comment on, and where no one will be able to say anything unkind. It's all just one big ball of awesome fluffiness. TuneTracker, the BeOS radio automation software, has just released something very special: TuneTracker System 5, the first version designed entirely and specifically for Haiku. In fact, it actually includes Haiku in the software package. Better yet, TuneTracker also unveiled several system-in-a-box products - which have Haiku and TuneTracker pre-installed.
Exactly twenty years ago, a document was published that played a huge role in establishing the web as we know it today. Twenty years later, and this simple and straightforward document is proof of an irrefutable fact: while closed technologies can change markets, open technologies can change the world.Oh multitasking. That staple of computing that got thrown out the window with many modern smartphones. We got some rudimentary thing in its place - but even as multitasking on phone and tablets improves, its user-visible side remains cumbersome. Windows 8 has a neat implementation, and now it's time Android follows in it footsteps.They're here! Whether that excites you or not remains to be seen, but the Galaxy S4, which will most likely become the best selling Android smartphone of the year by a huge margin, has been reviewed by all the major sites, and there's lots of interesting conclusions in there - although I think most of you will get the gist.Nokia has posted its quarterly results for the first quarter of 2013, and just like the quarters that came before, there's not a whole lot of good news in there. The rise in Lumia sales still can't even dream of making up for the sales drop in Symbian phones, and when broken down in versions, the sales figures for Windows Phone 8 Lumias in particular are very disappointing. In North America, Nokia is getting slaughtered.
Member since:
2006-06-28
vs Static Kernel Organization....
Since this is so obvious...let me start by saying:
1) Separation of these functions is nothing new. It has already been tried to various degrees using Mach.
2) Seems like a great idea, however, implementing the details reveals really really bad performance for lots things.
For one, context switching.
3) Unlike the static guys, who pretty much hammered out how they want to organize a static kernel, and what operations should be built into the CPU hardware wise to speed things up, not so in the Mach world.
Nobody in the Mach world can come up with a agreed plan on how to do all of this compartmentalized sharing of messaging and security context switching between parts.
Till everyone agrees, the hardware manufacturers are not going to support it.
Till then, any sort of non static kernel OS implementation is going to get its arse beat in economy of scale and performance.
Furthermore, advances in static kernel design are gradually eliminating a lot of the concerns over shared address space issues.
By the time the Mach guys figure out what they want or need, static kernels will already be there, and probably beyond.
-Hack